This guitar head sounds fantastic for my preferences and the purposes that I want to use it. It's the first guitar head that I actually own so I am not some kind of an expert on guitar heads. The high gain channel is the typical 6505 sound. Sounds great almost immediately without the need of a lot tweaking. The "tight" button is a "hidden" third (crunch) channel with apparent change in the characteristics of the sound, which is a great plus. The embedded Boost (TS9 like) and Sound gate also sound great. I used it also with a Bad Monkey as a boost and a Boss NS-2 and I can't really say which way it sounded better. I mainly used it with a guitar with Seymour Duncan Blackouts. What is more, in my opinion, this amp is not an one trick pony. You can dial in many sounds (with the appropriate pedals) from bluesy to punk rock. I used it also with my SSS strat and I can tell that it sounded great for classic punk rock. The cleans are good but they get easily saturated when you turn up the volume (I had to turn down way much of the volume of the active pickups in order to make them sound nice). The XLR sim cab sounds great and it's the main way I have used it so far. Anyway, it's a great amp and i strongly recommended for anyone who wants a lightweight and cheap version of the bigger thing!